I'm pretty sure they won't let me get a bare part without having their mechanics charge me for looking at the car and confirming it's bad in the first place, and at that point it's already in their shop.... sooo... Don't really know how to deal with that without getting doubly screwed.

I thought I finally had this narrowed down to the alternator, and I really don't want to burden you guys with multiple meetups for my car.

Well I thought I narrowed it down to my alternator the first few times too. Multiple meet ups sound like fun. You have no idea the fun we have sometimes. We all say lets meet up to play games, and it ends up being a driveway party with us installing or fixing stuff.

I hate that stupid diagnostic fee they charge, it's complete BS, cause if they don't find it the first time when you bring it in they charge you again, so yeah they get your money ether way.

Yea, thank you... there is still the issue it's my only car and all, the other issue is I'm already having to save up dimes, and not having any car for potentially another few weeks is pretty hard on me.

If I take it to autozone or some such to test the alternator, will that rule out a battery cable issue or not? Or do their tests use the battery cable (as I assume it does)?

Well it may and may not. They tested my starter and alternator, only thing that gave a clue was the current draw that the starter would pull was just a little lower than it's normal specs. Which was because the wires weren't making good contact. I couldn't even jump my car off since the wires were that bad. It would just click click click. Got under the car had someone try to start it and I could see sparking on the starter. Pulled the wires off and sure enough, it looked like I was trying to weld on it. I showed Raymond the wire but I doubt he remembers what it looked like. Every once in a while it would start working but I ended up getting stuck up at Fry's with my kids. Good thing my wife was at home to come get us. I had to push start the car, and when it start the batt. light was on. That was also another sign it was the wires, since the alternator was good, the only other indication was the volt meter gauge I have would show 14v instead of 14.7. It's a whole bunch of little signs. That and getting under there and looking at it. Once I took it off you could clearly see the cable was burnt up. The stock cables also melted the insulation off when I had those on there. Like I said once I replaced the cables I haven't had any problems since.

Ive done my alternator like 3 times already and its good if you buy one from autozone or oreilleys cause they usually come with lifetime warranty so once that one messes up go get a new one. I did already. I would be careful to cause they tried giving me a reman one and i paid for new one which is the one i have now. Maybe it had to do with my system lol. If this meet goes down ill show up.

Okay well, the autozone not far away has an alternator for my model (if it is indeed the 4 Cylinders 3 2.0L MFI DOHC off the list) for around 200ish dollars which I should be able to pickup at the end of the week. Anyone be able to help out on the early side of next week?

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